


Of Monsters and Men

by zeekubeast



Category: Tekkit Adventure, Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Body Horror, Control Issues, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gore, M/M, Medical Procedures, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Surgery, Threesome, Transformation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeekubeast/pseuds/zeekubeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You dream of falling. You remember the white knives, tearing deep inside you. They cut you out of the world. Rip out your roots like a flower and you can never go home. You know you can never go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a dream that is a nightmare that is also real

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Jo (aka ZawehZaweh) for Beta-ing.

A knife point; thin and sharp and blinding white. It traces. White lines of pain like branches against the moon scatter and part and tear into blackness. Hurt. Hurt beyond hurt. Everything bursts livid white and burns out into red roses of pain, blossoming. Then water. It boils.

It burns.

 It enters through the red holes torn by white knives and fills with pain. Hissing, spitting, screaming, no escaping.

You drown.

You die.

You are filled with white stones that close around your heart, your lungs. The white knives open out your head, run stones down your back, close the soft purple with red lines. You become the night sky, studded with stars by those cold white knives.

You are taken apart, piece by rending piece. White knives come in swarms, stinging and slicing, followed by the bitter burning water that washes the purple into blooming roses all over your skin. The pain is incomprehensible to the point where you cannot even feel it. There are moments of darkness, you think. You hear breathing – heavy, deafening. Air rushes around inside you, whistling through the holes. Glowing embers of pain flashing white with each inhale. It is torturous, but peaceful. You can only breathe in these moments, between the water and the white knives.

From darkness and breath, to blinding white knives, to acrid water engulfing all, to darkness once more. Dark, breathe. Knives, slice. Water, death. Breathe in dark. The darkness stretches across time, measured in breaths.

You do not count.

You do not think.

 You wait.

The knives will come again. They will bring pain and water and kill you. Then you will wake in darkness again, as you are now. But now...breathe. Air flows gently through you. The embers are dim. The knives will come and turn them bright again. But now…now you breathe. Now you sleep.

You awake to soft blue light. You pulse, dark red. Eyes open and see walls of stone, bars of iron, wood and glass. The room sways once and fades to black. You breathe in darkness.

You awake to orange light, streaming over your face. You look around, watching as the light climbs over the walls. Your eyes roam the path of the light. Blocks of metal with coloured spiderwebs sprawling out of them lie to your right. They whirr and chirp softly, humming as if alive.  You follow one of the strings, thick and swollen with water.

It leads to your arm, a silver sting in the back of your wrist fixing it in place. The light makes your skin look a strange orange and brown. Nothing makes sense to you. But there are no knives, no screams. You close your eyes and drift into the darkness of your own mind.

You dream.

Dream of home. Black endlessness above, black endlessness below. Rocks underfoot, pale and soft in your hands. You dream of black bodies like yours, with purple eyes like yours. You talk. Listen. You step off your world and into the one below you, with grass and trees and flowers in red and yellow. You hold the earth, the sand, the stones, all in your hands. Water pours from the sky and you flee. Sun rises and the bright lights drive you home. The world below is strange, filled with things that build and look at you with white eyes.

The dream turns bad. The white-eyes look at you. They scare you and make you scream with rage. Their stares are wrong, all wrong. They hurt, like water, like the blaze of the sun.

You dream of falling.

You remember the white knives, tearing deep inside you. They cut you out of the world. Rip out your roots like a flower and you can never go home. You know you can never go home. Water spills over your face and you scream.

You scream so loud that you wake up.


	2. Red Haired Girl

“Hey-hey! It’s alright now, you’re safe.”

You hear a voice like you have never heard before. The sounds are strange, melting around in your mind all confused like flickering torchlights, but you understand their meaning. Somehow..?

“I’m not gonna hurt you, alright. I’m your friend, see?” The voice says warmly, quite close to you.

You blink your eyes, water still burning on your cheeks. You hastily try to rub it off with the hand that doesn’t have the silver sting in it. You expect it to hurt more, but all it does is prickle against your skin. Another thing in this world that confuses you. You look up to see the source of the voice.

“Well hi there,” it squeaks. It.. It looks like a white-eyes, with lots of red hair and dots on its face. But there are big orange circles where the eyes would be. The back of your neck prickles. It.. (she?) continues talking to you. “My name’s Zoeya, but you can call me Zoey!”

There is a pause. You look at Zoey. Zoey looks at you. Zoey is expecting you to do something, you think. You bow your head, like you have seen other white-eyes do and speak her name.

“Zoey,” the word-name buzzes out of your mouth, strangely soft and slippery  feeling.  You say it in your mind over and over, as if you will gain some understanding through repitition.

Zoey seems quite pleased by this. At least, you think she is? She shows all her teeth and makes more high-pitched squeaks.

She looks at you again and asks, “What’s your name?”

You look at her, this strange creature that you woke up beside. How do you understand her? Where are you? Why are you here? Why does she ask you for a name? You have never had one before…

Zoey gets impatient. “I just told you my name, you should tell me yours. So we can be friends,” she tags on at the end as an afterthought. “It’s pretty rude not to say your name when someone asks.”

You murmur, bowing your head again. What is your name? Well. There is the name of your people, you think. You can tell her that.

 You tell her.

“Ree.. Rith.. Huh?” Her jaw drops slack and her nose screws up in confusion. “Say that again?”

You say it again, but you have a suspicion that while you can obviously understand her language, she cannot speak yours. Her voice is too soft and even, unable to create the clicks and rasps of your language.

“Riff.. rathm? Wot? Again, please?”

You sigh and say it yet again, as slowly as possible. She says it with you.

“Rith-Eee- An?” She purses her lips and mutters it again to herself. “Rythian...”

It doesn’t sound anything at all like what you were telling her, but it’s similar enough you suppose.

“Your name is Rythian?” she asks, looking at you. You nod. She smiles at you. “It’s nice to meetcha Rythian.”

“Zoey,” you reply, nodding your head again. You catch glimpse of your hands. They have changed. The black is layered over in browns, warm and fleshy. You flex your fingers, watching as the bones inside ripple. You feel a wave of nausea looking at them.

You put them down under the covers and close your eyes. Dull pulses of pain still crawl along your body, but there is something about this all that terrifies you. You don’t know what has happened. You don’t know where you are. You are vulnerable and weak and alone.

Well…not completely alone. You open your eyes again and see Zoey, chewing on a lock of her own hair.

“So, Rythian. I betcher wondering what this place is, right?” Zoey asks, twirling the wetted strand between her fingers. “And like, you’ve probably got a bunch of other questions too. Where y’are, who else lives here, where’s the bathroom, is there telly anywhere. Um.” She looks at you and laughs, scratching the back of her neck. “Probably not that last one, I don’t think you know what a telly even is at this point. But don’t worry! I’ll teach you all this stuff and loads more too! You’ll be speakin’ fluent english in no time.”

You can understand what she’s saying, mostly, despite the way her words slur together in their soft, melty way. What she means is a little harder to piece together. But you do want to ask her things.

“Where –“ you begin, pausing to pick out the right words. “Where … this is?” It doesn’t sound quite right to you, but she seems to understand.

“This room is the infirmary, slash medical place,” she gestures about the walls, complicated machinery lying in all directions. “Which is part of the big castle we’re in, and that’s our home! It’s pretty swish, flippin huge. Built on the top of a mountain. Duncan- er, I mean Lalna built it. And I live here too, with my mooshrooms and all my computers an’ stuff. And now you live here too,” She smiles at you widely. It scrunches up her face in a very silly looking way, and you can’t help but smile back a little. It’s infectious, you think.

She tells you many more things about the places outside of your room. There are tall towers that reach the clouds, and a portal called a telescope that allows you to see the stars as if you could touch them.

There are farms, which she built herself.  She talks at length, and with great pride, about the creatures called Mooshrooms. Daisy and Steven and their calves, with more names and anecdotes than you could possibly remember. They are like her children, she tells you, and it is overly apparent that she cares deeply about them.

“Awh, you’ve got to meet them sometime,” she sighs fondly. “Once you’re healed up a bit more you’ll get to meet everybody! And we can have a big party and stuff if y’like.”

“Party?” you ask, a little apprehensive. You’re not sure how you feel about so many people at once.

“Yeah! I’ll get Duncan to open up some beer and he can get his friends to make you a cake and everything, aw that’ll be lovely.”

“Duncan?” You interrupt her before she can go off on a tangent about food again. She mentioned him before – as the builder of the castle.

“Yeah he’s kinda the big cheese around here,” She snorts to herself. “Or that’s what he calls himself, hehe. He’s pretty short, actually. He’s a nice guy, once you get to know him. Kind of a bit.. _weird_ ,” Zoey waggles her fingers for emphasis, “He loves science, like a lot. Great with machines and all that. He’s helped build some for his friends in like their factories and stuff. Some people call him Lalna – well, most of them do. But his name’s actually Duncan so I call him that all the time.”

You furrow your brows in confusion. A man with two names, who builds large castles with metal boxes called machines inside of them. Your insides coil, remembering the white knives. Your head pulses dull red and you have to close your eyes against the light.

“Ooh, dear,” Zoey mutters oddly. “Sorry, I’ve probably talked your ears off. Lemme just get you some medicine and I’ll let you go back to sleep, alright?”

You nod, keeping your eyes shut. She bustles around the room in the background, before returning to you with a cup filled with strange liquid.

“Drink up, it’ll make the pain stop,” she says, pushing the rim against your lips.

It tastes powdery and leaves a bittersweet aftertaste in your mouth as you gulp it down. You return the cup, bowing your head in thanks. Zoey smiles at you softly as you lay down, helping to pull the blankets up around you.

“G’night, Rythian,” She says sweetly.

“Guh night… Zoey,” You reply.

Her cheeks turn the colour of her hair at this, and you are slightly alarmed. But then she laughs, and strokes your cheek with one of her hands. Her skin is tough and not quite smooth, but they are warm, warm as the desert rocks at night. The touch makes you shiver and your face burns where she touches, but not out of pain. Before you can make sense out of any of this, she has tiptoed out of the room and waved goodbye as the door shuts.

 

 

You are alone again. And confused… still. But you are not so afraid anymore. Your mind buzzes with thoughts, about the place you are in, about the man called Duncan who is also Lalna, and about Zoey. You think a lot about Zoey. When sleep’s tendrils come to take you into the darkness, the last thing you see in your mind is her, smiling at you.

 

You sleep at last, painlessly and peacefully.


	3. White Clothed Man

When you awake, it is not to the sight of Zoey. Nor are you alone.

Your senses blur into focus, the birdcall trills of machinery filter into your ears, their blinking lights piercing through the fog of sleep. There are footsteps, muffled against the stony floors. You turn your head to follow them. Amongst the pale walls, something shifts. Something comes closer.

Your eyes widen in horror, straining in the dim light to identify the thing. Faceless and white with gleaming black eyes in rows, it glides towards you steadily. Your breath catches. Has it come for you? You remember the knives. The pain. Terror washes over you in hot waves, paralyzing you.

 It turns, and a great white limb with darkened claws stretches out towards the wall. It gropes at the panels as if blind. You must escape, you think. But if you move it could see you.

There is a click.

 Lights stutter and blink into life, illuminating the world around you. Your chest thunders, breath rattling through your ribs. You can see the creature now and –

And.. it’s only a man, clothed in white.

 Only a man, with lenses covering his eyes like Zoey had, but in green. Relief shivers through you like ice. You breathe in, calm down. There is no danger here.

“Oh, you’re awake,” He says, mildly surprised. He mutters something under his breath that you can’t quite catch and turns away to tinker with his machines.

“Duncan?” you ask the strange man. He doesn’t quite fit the description that she gave you. He stops and turns to face you.

“Who told you that?” He asks, a sharpness hidden in the soft sounds of his voice.

“Zoey told me,” You reply bluntly.

“Huh,” he murmurs and scoffs, returning to his machinery. He mutters a lot, you notice. Perhaps that’s what Zoey meant by ‘weird’. He is smaller than her in size, as she said. He is also quite pale. His hair is a yellowy white and curls around his face. There is even a patch on his chin, which looks very strange to you. He looks quite unassuming, actually, in his long white coat and modest attire

He finishes checking over the machines to face you.

“Right,” he says, clapping his black hands together. “Let’s get this all sorted. I am Lalna, your master and you will refer to me as such.” 

He paces around your bed, footsteps pattering on the stone floor. “You will call me ‘Master Lalna’ or ‘Sir’. Understood?” He looks at you expectantly.

 You look back in confusion.

A laugh bubbles out of him suddenly. He closes his mouth as if trying to supress it. You stare at him, completely lost.

He clucks his tongue softly and shakes his head. “Still not firing on all engines, are we? No matter.. That’s fine,” he reaches out for a flat blue panel and flicks through the papers attached to it.

“We’re just gonna do some tests.. Basic medical check up. Make sure that-“ He flips back the pages with a snap of his wrist. “…Everything’s working. Right.”

He pulls open a sort of table from inside one of the metal boxes next to your bed, returning the papers to their original place. He picks up a strange looking device – a floppy branch made of black spiderwebs with a silvery disk on one end – and hooks it around his neck.

“Sit up,” he tells you, bluntly. You hesitate, before scrabbling with your fingers against the sheets to lift yourself upright. It’s harder than you expected. How long have you been lying down, you ask yourself, before a cold touch on your back makes you start. You crane your neck to see Lalna, guiding you upright with one of his hands pressed against your back.

 His hands feel nothing like Zoey’s.

They are not warm or soft. The texture is weirdly smooth, like dried out clay, but sticks to your skin unpleasantly with little bumps and grooves on the pads. You can feel the pressure of his bones over your spine and a hot wave of nausea washes over you. You clutch at your legs to steady yourself, screwing your eyes shut against the too bright lights. Lalna removes his hand.

When you look up again, he has hooked the ends of the device into his ears and is holding the metal disk up by the connecting string. He glances at you, as if waiting. Your chest tightens. Lalna says nothing as he moves in closer, pressing the disk against your chest. The cold metal makes you gasp through your teeth.

“Take deep breaths,” he says. You do as told. You breathe, cool air rushing inwards, filling up your lungs, pushing your ribs out against your skin. Lalna holds the disk against your chest, lips moving silently as you breath. He moves it from one side to the other, the cold shock of the disk making you flinch every time, causing your breath to stutter before resuming. 

He makes no sound as he moves about your chest. Your breathing fills up the silent room, the only other noise besides the clicks and chirps of machinery in the background. You close your eyes and think of darkness and measure time in breaths.

“Right,” Lalna mutters at last, stepping back and unhooking the device from his ears. “Lungs seem all fine, no obstructions. Let’s do blood pressure next.”

You exhale once more as he turns away to retrieve another device from the small work bench. You feel drained, despite not having been awake long enough for the shadows to shift. You glare up at the long row of lights above you.

They stain your vision in blue and green, flashing red on the inside of your eyelids. How did they trap the sun in their boxes, you wonder. You have a lot of questions, and very few answers to them.

“Hold out your arm,” he says, holding up a band of blue cloth, connected to a small machine. He fastens it around your upper arm, the blue cloth sticking to itself with a noise that sounds oddly familiar. You tilt your head to the side to examine it while Lalna fumbles with the machine.

 The cloth is very rough and stiff against your skin, but where you catch your fingers underneath the fold it feels like tiny little teeth. You pull at it, experimentally. It crackles a little as the two sides pull apart. It sounds like your language, only not. You smooth the sides together again, listening to the chirping.

It makes you smile, this band of cloth that makes half-words. You hook your fingertips underneath the edge then pull, hard. The ripping noise delights you. You let a little laugh crackle out of your throat, enjoying your new found toy. Your so-called master is less pleased.

“Wot-“  He blurts out, whipping around to look at you.

“No – no, stop. Don’t do that,” he bats at your hands, readjusting the cloth around your arm. “This isn’t a toy. Stop faffing around.”

You frown at him, and he frowns back before rolling his eyes and scoffing in exasperation.

“Honestly...flipping _Endermen_ ,” you hear him mutter under his breath. The way he says it makes you itch. You’re pretty sure you don’t like this ‘Master Lalna’ guy, whatever his problem is.

You wish Zoey was here.

“Where is Zoey?” You ask him. He flickers his gaze towards you silently, then presses a button on the machine. There is a shrill beep and the cloth around your arm inflates. You let out a grunt of surprise – jerking backwards. Lalna chuckles softly. You glare at him, your face flushing.

“Zoey’s not here,” he murmurs. “She’s out… Prob’ly by her farms.”

The cloth strap grips your arm tightly. The pressure is just short of painful. You stifle a grunt as it squeezes harder, the pulse in your arm throbbing.

“Wh- rmh..” You hold back a stutter and try again. “When will I see her? Again.”

He glances up at you, his face unreadable. He stares at you. Your skin crawls, heartbeat thudding in your ears. You don’t like him. You don’t like him at all. An urge to strike -  to bite - shivers its way down your spine. He lets out a puff of breath and turns back to the machine.

“I dunno,” he mutters. “Later.”

 The pressure on your arm releases in a long sigh. Lalna pulls the cloth off with a loud tear and folds it up with the machine. The thundering in your ears continues, but you no longer feel like biting.

You feel sick. You try to blink away the stinging lights, but all it does is make your head hurt and pounding worse. You curl up in on yourself, sliding down under the covers, scrunching your eyes in vain to block out the lights.

You hear the tapping of footsteps. Lalna walks. He stops. Something rustles, clicks, is put down on a metal surface. You can hear him murmuring to himself again. You wish he would go away. Go away and turn off the lights. You let out a soft whine.

There is a soft gasp, on the other side of the room. “Oh, ooh dear,” there is a worried tinge to his voice. The footsteps sweep around the room. Things clink and rustle and doors open and close. Darkness flickers before your eyes, beckoning you. You reach for it but it escapes you. You let out another whine. You just want to sleep.

“Oi,” Lalna mumbles, suddenly much closer. You open your eyes, and are promptly blinded by the light. He pulls you up by the shoulders – you are too weak and sore to protest much – pats his black hands over your face and arms. You try to tell him to go away, to go, but as soon as you open your mouth, powdery liquid pours in. The same that Zoey gave you.

You gulp it down, spluttering a little. He pats your back as you cough, and you wretch slightly. Your head pulses, red glowing over black. Something dry and crumbly is pressed against your lips gently.

“Eat it,” he says, urgency in his soft voice. “It’ll help the pain, and y’won’t vomit.”

You tentatively take a bite. It crumbles in your mouth, like clumps of sand, but smoother? It tastes… strange to you. It is sweet. You eat more of the sweet crumbly thing, cautiously avoiding Lalna’s hands. He makes a satisfied sound and there is rustling before he presses another against your mouth. You eat that too.

“Feel better?”

You breath heavily, the thumping in your head easing and the wriggling of your insides subsiding. You nod, once and say, “Yeah.”

“Good,” Lalna places something down next to your head. “If y’feel queasy again, take another one of those. Not too many though, that will just make you sick anyway.” He chuckles, as if there is something inherently hilarious about your suffering. You grumble and pull the sheets over the side of your face.

“Well, good night then.” He says softly, clicking the lights off. You listen to his footsteps fade out of the room. You stare at the darkened walls, thinking over what just happened. It seems that every time you awaken, something has changed.

 You think about what Zoey said about Lalna. She called him ‘weird’, and you can see that. But she also called him nice, once you got to know him… 

...You don’t want to think that Zoey is wrong…but then you also don’t know Lalna, you suppose. You don’t really know anything, you realize. It makes you feel small and scared.

Darkness tugs you gently into slumber and soothes your shivering.


	4. Blue Bedsheets

The next time you wake up, it is alone.

 You listen for footsteps.

The only sounds to be heard are your breathing and the chirping of machinery. You close your eyes, expecting to drift back into darkness. A moment passes and your eyes flicker open again. The room is still empty.

You sit up in your bed.

This is the first time you can remember being awake without there being someone else in the room. You feel something beyond the usual apprehension to your surroundings, beyond your confusion in this world.

You feel…awake? With the heel of  your hand you rub your eyes, pressing splashes of blue into your vision. The darkness does not beckon you into its merciful embrace.

You look around the room. In front of you, beneath the desert sky blue sheets are your legs and feet. You flex them, experimentally. They feel stiff and weak, as if you haven’t walked since forever. A knot coils in your stomach at the thought. Remembering things from before your first awakening is dangerous...

Instead, you turn your attention to the sides of your bed. One hand still has the silver sting with the water trickling into it, the dull ache of it flaring when you clench your fists. The wall beyond is covered in machines, silvery gray and studded with lights in green and red.

They are growing familiar to you, although you have no idea what their purposes may be. They have never shown you ill will, and you cannot understand their language, so you nod at them respectfully and direct your gaze to the other side of the room.

On that side is the door, where both Zoey and Lalna entered and exited. There is a chair, where you remember Zoey sitting on when she was by your side. You let out a quiet sigh. You hope she returns. Your lungs tighten slightly. You have to close your eyes and breathe before you continue to look around.

There is the desk, on the far wall, where Lalna got his devices: the black floppy stick with the metal disk, and the cloth that talked and squeezed your arm. There are papers on it still, with black ants and coloured lines stuck on them. There is a silver sheet of metal on the wall close to the door – a window perhaps? You cannot see through it from the angle of your bed, even when you crane your neck.

 Closest to you, however, is the small table with the cup on it. You pick it up with your good hand, examining it. The smell of powdery liquid lingers, despite being dry. Next to that is a red cylinder of some sort, ripped open at one end.

The flimsy paper crinkles noisily under your fingertips as you lift it up, allowing you to feel the discs held inside. If this is what you think it is – and – yes! The smell of sweetened sand and ripe wheat fills your nose as you pull out a golden brown circle, the size of your palm. You don’t even stop to think about your discovery before cramming it into your mouth.

It is as delicious as you remember. More delicious, even. Most likely because you no longer feel like emptying the contents of  your body out through your nose. You munch happily on the crumbly circle, taking care to pick at the fallen crumbs too. There’s no need to waste food, after all.

 Carefully placing the packet back on the table, the window catches your eye again. You wonder if you could see outside from there. Maybe you could see the farms that Zoey told you about? Maybe you’d be able to see the Mooshrooms and the fields and so on? Maybe you could even see Zoey? You like that idea.

Without thinking, you swing your legs over the edge of the bed and stand up. A bolt of pain shoots up your arm instantly. You look to see that the sting has fallen, red painting the tip that was embedded in your skin. Only a slight pinprick marks the back of your hand. You stare at in wonder as the pain recedes to nothing more than a low flicker of soreness.

You want to ask Zoey what it was for, what reason it had for being placed there, and whether the fact that it’s gone now is a bad thing. You want to ask everything.

You need to find her.

Wobbling a little, you take a step forward. Your legs feel like strangers, stiff and sensitive and completely unused to walking. You chirp at them irritably. The next step forward you watch your leg swing forward, heel contacting the cold white stone floors and the stubby fingers of your feet spreading out to balance your weight.

The bones in your legs creak like the branches of old trees. You take another step, with your arms stretched out to the side, and you wobble a little less.

The window seems so much further away all of a sudden, tiled floors stretching dizzyingly ahead of you. You glance at your bed, considering retreat. You could always wait for her to come back? You could count the hours in breaths and drift through the still waters of darkness until she returns.

A tightness forms around your chest. What if she doesn’t comes back?

The thought is too bleak for you to bear. You set your sights on the window. You will find her. Spurred by purpose, you manage to navigate your way across, leaning on walls to steady your stuttering steps. Your heart swells in triumph as you finally reach it, excited to see beyond your walls.

But the window doesn’t show the outside world.

 It shows a room, and in it, a strange dark figure with gleaming eyes. You back away and watch the figure dissapear. You peek back and nearly jump with fright when you find yourself staring at a pair of eyes. The figure looks just as startled as you feel. Cautiously, you step forward. It copies you, inching forward. You nod at it and see it nod with you.

It’s then that you realize you are looking at yourself. A reflection. They must have trapped water and turned it solid, like they trapped the sun in their tubes of light.

You see yourself  fully for the first time.

Your skin is brown, like soil, and scratched and pocked with hundreds of pale lines. Scars, from the white knives. You have hair, which you don’t remember before. It grows in two arches over your eyes and all over the back of your head. You run your fingers through it, and it feels like fine blades of grass, but softer.

Your body looks.. strange. You’re very thin, and very tall. Lifting your arms up you can see your brown skin stretching over your ribs, bones barely concealed behind a thin layer of muscle and sinew.

You look… you look like a white-eyes. Like a human.

“Am I human?” Your voice echoes in the empty room.

You wrap your narrow arms around yourself. You feel exposed outside of the comfort of your bedsheets. Lalna and Zoey both had coverings over their skin, like the fur of wolves, but made of cloth. The only cloth you have is on your bed.

 You pull off the cover and hold it up to see if you could make anything with it. Wrapping it over your shoulders and around your waist you manage to fashion something resembling clothes. It doesn’t do much to cover your legs or arms, which stick out of the edges like stray branches, but it does make you feel warmer and a little bit safer.

You set your sights on the door. The only things you know of the world beyond this room are what Zoey has told you and the fleeting forms of memory. There could be things beyond your room that seek to hurt you. You could get lost beyond hope of returning. The door stands, a barrier between all the horrors of the world and you. A barrier between you and Zoey.

You close your eyes and feel the comfort of darkness within yourself. It is familiar. It is safe. With your mind’s eye you see the shape of the world around you. You find a space for yourself on the other side of the door, and draw a thin line from where you stand.

You step through.

The world flashes black then red then white then red again and you feel all your bones clatter around inside you as you come crashing to the floor. You gasp for breath, each exhale tearing through your throat like fire, heart pounding furiously at your ribs to break free. Head hurts, body hurts, the floor is cold and hard against your hands and knees.

 You wretch. Bile and blood pour out of your mouth and a scream of pain rips from your chest. Thoughts scatter through your mind like startled birds. Why did this happen? What is this pain? Everything feels so _wrong._

 Reeling in pain, you claw at the ground, hold as still as you can and try not to collapse.

 Breathe.

Breathe in, breathe out.

You will yourself into darkness until the pain subsides to a dull throbbing just under your eyelids. Shivers wrack through your body, a cold aching in your bones where your skin touches the ground. You pull the sheet around you tighter and try to sit up.

You don’t understand what went wrong.

You stare at your hands. They are your hands, and you can feel them move, feel the muscle and bones within them and you know they are yours. But they are also not yours. This.. This body you have, that you don’t remember having before. It. It feels wrong. You don’t understand. You are this body. How can a body be wrong for itself?

Your breathing grows short and sharp. How is it wrong? Why is it wrong? You clutch your arms and grip down, willing the shaking to stop. Wrong, wrong wrong wrong, your mind chants. Wrong wrong wrong wrong – _no!_

A sound startles you.

Footsteps.

Voices.

You hold your breath and stay low, tensed like an animal. The voices draw closer. You tilt your head to listen.

“He’s really – doing much better… I expected…”

It’s muffled and echoes slightly off the walls but you can just make out the words.

“.. more side-effects than that.. He seems to..”

You recognize that voice.

The footsteps are louder now. Clearer.

“Aw, that’s brilliant!” The other voice is high and clear and your heart leaps whe you hear it.

_Zoey._

You scramble against the wall to find your feet. She’s near. She’s coming towards you. You look ahead down the corridor to see them – Zoey _and Lalna_ – walking around the corner towards you.

“Zoey!” You call out to her, tottering along the wall towards them.

“Rythian?” She stops in her tracks and looks at you. “Rythian!”

She runs towards you, Lalna close behind, and comes to a stop in front of you. She’s a lot shorter than you remember. She looks up at you, an expression on her face that you can’t read. You’re so happy to see her.

“What’re you doing outside of your room?” She asks, holding your hands and turning them over. Her hands are so warm. A flood of questions pour from her.

“Where’s your drip? How did you get out? Is that the bed- There’s blood on your mouth!” Her mouth turns downward and her eyebrows furrow together. “Rythian, what have you done?!”

“Rythian?” Lalna glances between the two of you in confusion. “You’ve named him?”

“It’s his own name, he told it to me,” Zoey says with a glance to him before turning back to you.

“What-“ He starts.

 “Zoey,” you interrupt him. She looks up at you and you can see her eyes through the golden lenses. Her hands are still holding yours and they are warm and comforting and you have missed them so much.

“I found you,” you whisper, smiling with relief.

She smiles at you for a moment and all the world is right. Then she shakes her head and pushes you back.

“You’re not supposed to leave your room,” Zoey says to you very seriously. “You could have been hurt.”

“I – but – I- I,”  you stammer, heart sinking. Your body trembles, still weak from your collapse. This isn’t what you had in mind at all.

 “ _I found you_ ," you whine. Why isn’t she happy to see you?

“Look at you, you’re shaking like a leaf. We need to get you back to bed.”

She grabs you around the arm just under the shoulder and tugs you forward. You stumble over your own feet and it nearly throws you off balance. You cling to the wall, trying to steady yourself.

“C’mon, Duncan! Help me out here.” She shoots a glance at Lalna and pulls you away from the wall.

“What? Oh. Right.” Lalna grabs your other arm and you let out a little shriek as his sticky black fingers make contact with your skin. You glare at him and struggle slightly. _Don’t touch me_ , you hiss at him, baring your teeth.

 “He’s making a noise,” Lalna glances at her panickedly. “Why is he making that noise?”

“Rythian.” Zoey looks at you. You tear your gaze from him to meet her eyes. She is not happy. She scowls and clucks her tongue and rolls her eyes and sighs. “Please. You need to go back to your room.”

Hesitating, you nod and mumble, “Okay.”

You don’t want Zoey to be angry with you.

The two of them lead you back to your room, Zoey supporting you from under one arm, Lalna tagging slightly behind you, keeping his hands to himself. There’s a scuffle at the door, when they find out that it was left locked.

“But how did you get out if you didn’t use the door?” Zoey exclaims.

“That probably has something to do with it.” Lalna murmurs, pointing to the mess you left on the floor.

You hang your head morosely, your face blazing with shame. Your knees still ache from that accident and the smell of your own blood is bitter in your mouth. It makes you feel horrible, like you’ve done something terribly wrong.

“Interesting..,” he mutters. You hate the way his voice lilts as his eyes roam over you.

Lalna skirts past the two of you to open the door. You huddle closer to Zoey, reaching for her hand. She squeezes yours gently. It makes you feel calmer. Safer.

“It’ll be alright,” she mumbles to you absently when the door opens. She tugs you forward by the hand, cooing at you sweetly. “Come along. C’mon. Back to bed.”

You stumble behind her sluggishly, the bones beneath your skin creaking under the weight of your tired eyes. You feel so heavy suddenly. The world blurs around the corners and all you can keep focused on is Zoey’s hands leading you in and Zoey’s voice, low and soothing and saying your name softly as she pulls the dirty blankets off of you and tucks you into your bed with cleans ones.

“There now. That’s a good boy.”

Her hands pat over your blanket and you have never felt so comfortable in your life. You hear the sound of chair legs scraping backwards – she stands up. Is she leaving? Her footsteps patter away from your bed side.

 “Zoey?” You cry. You reach a hand out from beneath the blankets and reach out to her. You plead for her,“Zoey – please. Stay.”

“I’ll be right back, okay, I just need to do something first.” Her voice is soft but urgent. She hovers between you and the door.

Lalna clears his throat in the background. “Zoey?”

“I’m comin’, just a sec!” She turns back to you and strokes a hand through your hair and over your face and you shiver softly into it.

“I’ll be back, Rythian. I promise.”

Her lips press against your forehead and she is gone.

The door shuts behind them with a click. You are left alone in your bed, again. Water begins to prick at your eyes and something forms a ball in your throat that you can’t swallow.

You hear them talking outside your door. They’re talking about you.

“That was nuts. That was – just – completely nuts.”

“He was looking for you.”

“I know – gosh! He didn’t look too happy about you though.”

Lalna chuckles and there’s a soft thump where he leans against the door. “Not surprised, really…”

There is a pause.

“It’s a good thing he didn’t get too far.”

“It’s a good thing he didn’t accidentally wreck himself!” Zoey’s voice cracks and it hits you in the heart like a fist. “Duncan! There was blood –“

“I know. I saw. And vomit, it looked like.”

“What on earth did he do?!”

“Well.. He is part en-” Lalna’s voice drops to a mumble and you can’t make out the words at all.

“So he can still – y’know? Really?”

“Yeah, looks like it. Not too well though.”

There’s another pause and it sounds like Zoey leans against the door next to Lalna.

“We need to do something.” She sighs and the back of her head hits the door. “Can’t just keep him trapped in a box like that.”

Lalna mumbles something that sounds like a question, giggles bubbling slightly. There’s a thump and he lets out a soft yelp.

“I was just kidding –“ He laughs.  “Look. We can start giving him less…” His voice drops out of hearing again.

All you can hear now is his indistinguishable mutters and Zoey interjecting with the odd “Okay” or “Right, right. Gotcha.”

You strain your ears trying to understand what they’re saying but it’s no use. The throbbing behind your eyelids is too loud and you can barely keep focused on listening in. All you know is that you’ve done something wrong, very wrong. And made Zoey upset.

You should have never left your room, you berate yourself, hissing as water drips out of your eyes and leaves stinging trails on your cheeks. You are stupid. Stupid and horrible and wrong. Breath catches in your throat and you cover your mouth with both hands to stifle the ugly sounds. You shut your eyes and bury your face against the pillow and let out a muffled wail.

 You hate everything.

 You hate yourself.

You hate that you made Zoey sad.

You try to block it out, to forget that it all happened. You will yourself into the darkness and stay there. Only bad things happen when you are awake. If you stay in the dark then nothing bad can ever happen to you again. You will never have to see Zoey sad again.

Darkness surrounds you and you welcome it with open arms.

 You are never going to leave the dark again.


End file.
